Others will argue differently, but my earnings have increased dramatically since Google cracked down. Before that, I had to compete with overseas writers whose command of English was great as a second language, but pretty poor as a first language. It didn’t matter then to many internet marketers how well you wrote or how carefully you researched your content. What mattered was content, pure and simple. That’s what got you to the coveted Page One on the search engines.

When I started out, I was desperate. Otherwise I wouldn’t have considered writing most of the stuff I wrote. I was making half a cent a word writing 30 article sets that repeated the same information over and over again from different angles. When I worked my way up to a penny a word, I was overjoyed. Pre-panda, I peaked at two cents a word or $10 for a 500 word article. Before I worked up the courage to start asking for even that much, I had to have a solid 5 star rating on Elance, a lot of great feedback and enough ongoing work to risk being turned down for asking for too much money.

Post-panda, I’ve clients are discovering that quality counts. For example, I recently received this email from a client of mine:

Hi Rob, Just some good feedback for you. The editors of MBG pin the best articles of the day (usually one or two articles a day) to the top of the list of articles. Articles are pined based on the quality of the writing, an interesting topic and images included (I try to find really good related images for each article). I have been posting an article a day on MBG guest from your December batch for the last 6 days in a row each article has been pinned as one of the top articles of the day. I have had a number of people comment how good the articles are, so well done.

He’s willing to pay me a little more because he gets results for his efforts. Other sites I work for are even more demanding and willing to pay for it, because their readers expect their articles to be authoritative, informative and entertaining. If they aren’t, their visitors won’t click through to the service or product links.

The bottom line for me is that I now make twice as much per week for half the effort than I made pre-Panda. I still don’t make quite enough to live comfortably in Australia, but I could survive there now and that’s pretty good for a freelancer who started from scratch just a few years ago. It’s not the best you can do, though. My daughter, for instance, started out as an unpaid blogger. That led to some paid assignments, which led to work as a PA and now she is working full time on a nice salary plus benefits.

So how much money can a freelance writer make? I think it depends on where your starting point is. If you have to ask that question, you’re probably starting from where I started: pretty much near the bottom of the heap. From what I can gather on Linkedin discussions and elsewhere, the dream of sitting in the sun tapping away at your keyboard for a couple of hours a day and making a “six figure income” is just that – a dream. But if you’re willing enough or desperate enough to put in the time, you can make a decent living as a freelance writer.

I taught myself HTML back when knowing HTML was something to brag about. That was when modems screeched and a 386MB computer was the Latest Thing. Back then I was a member of the Sydney Rockclimbing Club. Membership was flagging and I took it upon myself to be the club’s first official webmaster. It’s amazing what an impact the internet had, even then. My website was responsible for quadrupling the club’s membership within a year. I created more websites and got paid for a few, though it was really only a hobby. Two websites I made in 2000, the year of the Millennium Bug, are still online. You can view them Here and Here.

At about the same time as the Millenium Bug was threatening to bite, the writing bug bit me and in addition to the websites I created, I began doing freelance writing for print publications. Some of the publications I have written for include:

• The Sydney Morning Herald (The Big Chillout, Weekend Edition Travel Section, January 14-15, 2006)

• Tracks: the Surfer’s Bible (A series of five articles in 1997-98)

• Heritage: the Vietnam Airlines In-flight magazine (series of two: Northern and Southern Vietnam, Jan-Feb 1999 and July-August 1999)

• Antiques in New South Wales (series of six: Korean and Japanese woodworking traditions, 1999-2000)

• Rock – Australia’s premier rock climbing magazine

Since moving to Cambodia in 2006, I have been writing full time. Currently, I enjoy ongoing working relationships with the producers of some of Australia’s most successful websites and blogs. Click the following links to view my contributions to a few of these sites:

Home Improvement Pages

Natural Therapy Pages

Travel Oz Blog

In addition, I have ghostwritten several ebooks and recently completed a non-fiction book. A commissioned work about the effect of the internet on the global job market, it is over 150 pages long and contains over 200 references.

If you are interested in making use of my services, email: writer@writing-resources.org

Part of being truly successful is working towards honing this skill and improving in all areas. You have to increase your vocabulary and learn to write with efficiency and high quality, which is where most people put their focus. But what about the freelancing part?

From finding work to learning more about the niche you have chosen to immerse yourself in, there is a lot to work at. Which can be made much easier if you have the right tools.

These resources are all very useful, free and can help you to improve your freelance writing business.

About Freelance Writing

This blog is run by Anne Wayman, a prolific freelance writer that has been in the business for more than 30 years. While she admits it took a lot of time, she eventually became completely self-sufficient with her income made by writing, and it increases more every year.

She has put together a great collection of articles on living and working as a freelancer. She also has a collection of ebooks and audiobooks, a section on setting fees and a page where she updates a list of freelancing jobs from around the web three times per week. You can subscribe via email for these updates in your inbox.

Copyblogger

One of the most popular freelancing sites on the web, Copyblogger is a full resource for anyone who is looking to generate more traffic to their website or blog, find opportunities for franchise expansion or learn the ways of online marketing. In fact, they currently have an impressive 20 part course completely free on the topic of Internet marketing.

If you have been looking for a site that will assist you on improving your copywriting or SEO writing, this one is especially beneficial. But they also have sections on landing pages, email marketing, keyword research, content marketing and more.

The Renegade Writer

Another site run by people who have really “made it” in the biz, The Renegade Writer is the blog run by Linda Formichelli and Diane Burrell. The two co-authored a book by the same name, which is widely considered one of the best on the topic of freelance writing in today’s multi-media focused world.

They have plenty of tele-classes and courses, all free, and even paid phone mentoring from Linda. While it is a bit pricey, it isn’t nearly as bad as many other similar programs, and costs $140/hour, or $75/half hour.

Freelance Writing Gigs

Any writer will tell you that half the battle is finding work. That is even more true if you don’t have steady clients who provide at least some continual work. Which many freelancers, especially those in the beginning stages, don’t yet have. So where do you turn?

A number of sites have lists of jobs, but Freelance Writing Gigs post almost every day with new ones for you to peruse. They are also a lot more thorough, and have a bit of work sent into them by people who wants their ad seen.

In addition, they have a grammar guide, a business tools section and more.

The Savvy Freelancer

There is a lot to be offered on this blog, which is written by the talented Alexis Rodrigo. But of everything on her site, perhaps the most helpful is her amazing 31-day guide to building (or improving) a freelance business. You can either read through each part, or sign up for a daily action guide that breaks it up into a month of lessons.

She truly does cover all areas, from assessing your skills and strengths as a writer, to setting your rates. She even has several articles on WordPress plugins that will help your personal site, and tips on competing in a rather highly-saturated marketplace.

Conclusion

There are so many challenges as a freelance writer, which you will probably have seen through experience. But whether you are just getting started or you have been in the game for awhile, there are tools that can help you get past those struggles and be successful in all you do.

What are some of your own favorites that you use on a regular basis? Let us know in the comments.

Jessy is a creative writer for Life Insurance Finder, the free resource for comparing insurance plans available in Australia.

Finding my way around Google Analytics hasn’t been easy, but it’s been good fun as I discover new things all the time. The first time I realised I was doing something wrong was just after I boasted on Facebook that I had surpassed the 2000 visitors mark. Then one day I saw that my visitor numbers had dropped. How could that be? It was because the number is a monthly number, not a grand total.

That experience made me start playing around a little more on the the Google Analytics site. The little Map Overlay feature, for instance, is pretty cool, but when you click on “View Report,” it gets even cooler. A big colour coded map comes up and when you move your cursor around, you get a reading of the exact number of visitors you’ve had from different countries. By far the majority of mine were from the United States, but the UK, Australia and Canada’s numbers combined exceeded those of the US. That was interesting enough, but when I discovered I’d had a visitor from Saudi Arabia, 3 visitors from Uganda and 4 visitors from Turkey, I got really excited. Just the thought of a few people in these far flung places looking at my website brought home to me just how amazing the internet is.

Feedjit is a little widget I added awhile ago and wrote a short piece about here recently. Well, the more I use it, the more I love it. Aside from being able to see where your most recent visitors came from, you can click on “Real time view” at the bottom of the display and look at a much more extensive list that also shows how they found you. Just this evening I published a blog, Direct Flights from Australia Coming to Phnom Penh.  As is my habit, I then shared it on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Delicious and Diggit. Now that I have Feedjit, I can see pretty clearly that Stumbleupon and Reddit are by far my best auxiliary traffic sources.

Even better from a human perspective is seeing where my visitors come from:

• 2 minutes ago, someone from Lansing Michigan viewed my Cycling in Sihanoukville post
• 30 minutes ago, someone in Las Vegas viewed my Direct Flights Post
• 7 minutes before that, a person in Vancouver BC viewed the same post

And so it goes: real people reading my blog. I guess it sounds a little narcissistic, but who blogs in the hope that no one will read what they have to say? I get tragically few visitors to this site, so I’m not going to add the Feedjit widget yet. But if I start writing more content here and can find a few keywords that can take me through the maze of writing related blogs, I should get enough traffic to make things interesting. Stay tuned and thanks for visiting, whoever you are and wherever you may be.

Feedjit is a free widget you can add to your website or blog. It’s dead easy to install on WordPress. Simply drag and drop a text box from outside the widget area to wherever you want to place it amongst your other widgets. Then copy and paste the code into the text area, click save and it’s done. I’ve just done it here.

So far, the only traffic that has shown up here is mine, but this morning I made a new post on my journal, Some Sihanoukville Safety Tips for Travellers and when I came back a couple of hours later, I discovered I’d already had visitors from all over the world, including Melbourne, Australia; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Montreal, Quebec and South San Francisco, California. If I’d checked on Google Analytics, I would have seen numbers only. Having a location just makes those visitors more real to me and inspires me to write more and better blog posts.

After you’ve visited this page, come back and look for yourself on my sidebar. Then imagine how good it feels on my end to see you there. If you want to really personalise your blog or website, I highly recommend Feedjit. Like I said, it’s free. In return, they place one unobtrusive ad at the bottom of the widget. That’s a price I’m more than willing to pay. If you don’t like the ad, you can get the paid version of Feedjit for $4.95 a month or the professional version for $9.95 a month. Check it out.

PS:  I don’t have an affiliate account with Feedjit. I just really like the widget.

In the past, when freelancing was a casual avocation, I was fortunate enough to have all but two of my submitted articles published. Significantly, I think, those were two that I deliberately wrote with only one end in mind: to make money. The rest either came from the heart or were follow-up articles after having gotten my foot in the door.

Writing web content is something I fell into out of dire necessity: it was either that or go hungry. I live in a country where people die all the time because they can’t afford the basic necessities of life and my ‘status’ as a foreigner with no previous experience with destitution does not exempt me. Yes, I could have pulled out my VISA card, bailed out back to Australia and gone on the dole and free medical care, but had I done that, my Cambodian family would have suffered far more than I was willing to accept. Fortunately, after 3 years of struggle, things have turned out okay. I have steady work for clients I like and respect and am making enough to support myself and my family.

My last big freelance assignment was a book. The topic was centred around the internet’s negative affect on the job market in the U.S. and other developed countries. A week ago, I could have told you the title and given the book a plug, but just yesterday I received a token payment in exchange for removing my name as co-author. The only other option I was offered was to pay a portion of the money the chosen publisher demanded for publishing the book. To my way of thinking, that’s not the way to get published.

The Self Publishing Alternative

Self publishing used to be a dirty word amongst writers, but it is slowly gaining respectability. The internet is responsible for this. Between inexpensive print-on-demand platforms and eBook publishers, anybody can do it, but after that, you’re on your own. Today, anybody who has strung together enough words to fill a few chapters can say, “I’ve written a book.” There’s nothing to it. Very few, however, can say, “My self published book is selling” and even fewer can say they have self published a book that readers recommend to others.  That’s where self publishing respectability comes from. In order to gain that respectability, you have to do two things:

1. Write a book that entertains and/or informs your reader (ideally both).
2. Learn how to market your book.

I can’t think of a single genuinely good book that hasn’t been written with passion and conviction. This includes so-called “pulp fiction” and non-fiction. Occasionally, a writer’s passion stems from a desire to make money, but only rarely, because there are a lot of easier ways to make a living. When it does spring from money, it’s usually because the writer has no other recourse or is appalled by the thought of making money any other way.

Marketing a book, too, has to spring from passion or conviction or you won’t be able to go the distance. That’s one of the reasons why I declined the “invitation” to pay a portion of the publishing fee. Publishers are in it for the money and if they are not willing to assume any risk, they are not going to market with passion. They are “vanity” publishers who prey on writers’ desire to see their name in print. There’s no respect in that. I don’t want to see my name on that book even if it does find its way on to the shelves and sells more than the 5000 copies that have to sell before the author starts to receive any royalties.

Nice to get that off my chest. Now, back to work!

There’s a better way to do it. It looks much cooler if you embed the code. Here’s how it’s done:

1. On soundcloud, put your cursor over “You” at the top and open “Tracks” to display your track.
2. In the upper left corner of your track, you’ll see a “Share” button. Click it.
3. At the bottom of the display that pops up, you’ll see the embed link. Click inside it and it will be highlighted. Copy it (I use control/C to copy or you can use edit/copy).
4. Now go to your WordPress blog post. Change from the “Visual” tab to the “HTML” tab and paste the embed code there (control/V or edit/paste). You should see a long string of code starting with “<object height=”81″ width=”100%”> and ending with </span>. It’s done.
5. Switch back to Visual and you should see a wide box with yellow filler and an “f” (for Flash) logo in the centre. After you publish, this will turn into the stream bar.

My Introduction to SoundCloud by RobSchneiderOz

That’s pretty cool. I’m not sure how much free space you get on SoundCloud, but my guess is that it’s plenty for short podcasts, since they also have a facility for storing music files. I’ll keep you updated with my progress, but so far I think I’ve stumbled across a winner.

I’m hoping to do something a little bit different here on Writing Resources. Instead of pretending to have all the secrets to unimaginable online success, I’m going to offer tips and resources to those of you who are starting from the bottom. Why? Because that’s how I got my start and I know from experience there’s no magic bullet to success. I learned a lot of things the hard way. Hopefully, I’ll be able to help you avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made along the way.

Bear with me for a little while. I have to do this in my spare time and I have very little of that. Thankfully, the days of getting short, poorly paid assignments and working 80 hour weeks are behind me. I’m now making 3 times as much as I used to in  half the time. I’m still not rich, but I’m making a comfortable living doing what I love to do.

We’re living in perilous times. Jobs are scarce and getting scarcer. All I can say is, “Been there. Done that.” When I started writing full time, it was out of desperation. I had no job, no money and no hope. I had to take the first writing assignment I could find simply in order to eat. Starting from rock bottom, I learned fast because I had to. Does that sound like you or are you just in a 9 to 5 rut and want to find a way out of it? Either way, if you can write an email, you can start earning a living online. I really don’t want anyone else to go through what I’ve been through. That’s the main reason for this website revamp.

While my site is undergoing renovations, why not follow me on Twitter? I’ll keep you informed about my progress and you can get to know me a little better. Just send me a Tweet and mention Writing Resources and I’ll follow you as well.

Okay, back to work now. There’s a lot of work to do. See you later.

Sihanoukville Bridge

Scroll down to view the short video that goes with this entry. It will show you how to embed an image into a WordPress blog.

To embed a photo you’ve found on a website, follow these simple steps:

1. Place your cursor over the image on the post.
2. Right click and choose “View Image” from the drop down menu. You will then be directed to a page that will display the image only.
3. Right click again. This time, select “Copy image location”.
4. Return to your blog and place your cursor where you want the image to go.
5. Go to Upload/Insert and then open the tab that says, “From URL”.
6. Paste the copied URL into the space provided.
7. Fill in the other areas as you like and you’re done.

Here’s the video: Embed Tutorial

I used Dropbox to save this video. With Dropbox, you can share files between your computers, with other invited users or with the public. You get two gigs free storage or can upgrade to more storage space if you like. I love Dropbox and don’t know how I got by without it. If you sign up via one of these links, I’ll get free extra storage. Thanks in advance.

by Saeed Sehizadeh and Rob Schneider

The Curse of the Internet is the first full length book I’ve been commissioned to write. It started off as “just another assignment,” albeit a more interesting and challenging one than many. A series of similar assignments were put up for bids on Elance. In each of them, the brief was to write 5-7000 words about a sector of the economy and present the argument that the internet was having a significant or even catastrophic impact on jobs in that sector of the economy.

It must have been nearly a year ago that I was awarded the first of several of these assignments. At the time, I bid on the assignment for three reasons:

1. I needed the money.
2. It was an interesting sounding topic.
3. I was sceptical and saw it as a challenge.

By the time I finished the first assignment, I was much less sceptical. The service provider, Saeed Sehizadeh, was impressed with my work and offered me several more topics. Finally, he asked me if I would like to edit all of the articles, write an introductory chapter and a conclusion and collaborate with him on a book. I readily accepted. By then I was engrossed in the subject so deeply, I wanted to see it through to the end.

Other writers apparently hadn’t been as captivated as I had been and I ended up having to totally rewrite several articles. I could sympathise with them to a degree. Although I had been offered adequate compensation for the articles based on word count, on a per hour basis I ended up making far less than I do on “fluff” articles. Research was to blame for this. It wasn’t that it was hard to find evidence to back our argument; it was that there was too much evidence. In the end, I had an appendix that included over 200 authoritative sources. I could have included many more, but left out many of the fringe opinions and stuck with the more mainstream sources wherever possible.

By the time I finished, I was burnt out and when The Curse of the Internet was finally published on Amazon about two weeks ago, my level of enthusiasm had dwindled to near zero. I thought, “Here’s this great book that’s going to languish unread on Amazon” and got back to my regular assignments, trying to put it out of my mind.

Just this morning I got an email from Saeed, telling me that a couple of reviews had already been posted on Amazon. The book got 4 Stars from one reader and 5 Stars from another and both of them wrote very flattering reviews. Here’s one:

This well-documented gem of a book makes a convincing case for the devastating fincancial repurcussions of the internet. Not only does the book hold up under scrutiny but it warns of accelerating dislocation of our country’s and the world’s economy.

Some of the issues addressed include the the internet’s influence on several major industries; manufacturing, retail, and real estate. The authors trace the strain on these pillars of financial stability. Manufacturing requires fewer and fewer employees. Most retail operations have been scaled back and many now exist only in cyberspace. The book goes on to illustrate the internet’s influences on the current and future retraction of real estate markets.

The Curse of the Internet finally combines these repurcussions and reveals just how close we are to financial Armageddon, and also what we can do to help forestall this disaster and move forward to a more financially secure future.

If you, like me, see the internet as a blessing, The Curse of the Internet will teach you that we are in the minority. For every job created by the internet and related technologies, many more are lost. Where jobs are not lost, compensation is reduced dramatically. This is true throughout all major sectors of the economy. I was most sceptical about the retail sector, but during the course of my research, I learned that even the big department stores like Macy’s, after having to close doors and cut back staff as a result of the recession, were changing their business strategies and investing more in their online presence while making greater cutbacks in their brick and mortar establishments.

Take a look at The Curse of the Internet. I suggest you preview the introduction on Amazon. It tells the whole story in a nutshell. If you like it, please buy it or wait until the print version becomes available. Saeed is working with an agent now and they are both confident a publisher will be found.